Mod News: And Lots Of It

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As ModDB’s Mod of the Year awards voting continues, the splendid stream of hyper-updates doth flow. Sometimes this means reams or rubbish to fight through, but this week’s been especially good – meaning there’s some cracking news from the past seven days buried beneath the jump. Go!NEWS
There’s been a load of news concerning HL2 mod Blade Symphony this week, and good stuff too. Here’s some gubbins about one of the mod’s three release characters, here’s a huge post about the history of the mod and its team, and here are some gorgeous screenshots. I’m watching this one very closely indeed.

Meanwhile, here’s some updates from Sins of a Solar Empire mod Future Wars – Tactical Simulator. It’s a Star Trek mod, generally refitted with new stuff, and it’s been hugely well received by the community so far. This next update will be the final version, so say the team.

While the Future Wars team starts to wrap things up, The Morrowind Rebirth project is in fuller swing than ever. This is a collection of developer Trance’s previous Morrowind mods, along with various additional changes, which should combine to present his own version of Vvardenfell. Prettier, and with revamped AI, it’s looking excellent. The beta’s due to land next month.

And then there’s Half-Life 2 mod Zeitgeist. But it still looks absolutely extraordinary, and with every update I’m astonished by the team’s creative ambition. There’s a new dev blog here, along with some gorgeous screenshots – while the team’s work with the Source engine isn’t quite as technically impressive as that of some other mod developers, it exudes such a distinct style that my jaw literally drops every time they release something new.

I absolutely love the visual style of The Revenge, too. It’s – yes, I know – a Half-Life 2 mod which seems to have been in development for a while, although I’ve only just noticed it this week. It’s looking great, although the description on its ModDB page reminds me of that Half-Life 2 dramatic reading vid on Youtube.

Something a bit less Sourcey to finish with, then: the Men of War WW1 mod. This update details a little bit about the mod’s missions, and includes a new video to boot. It’s looking nice, and due out early next year.

RELEASES
The Carrion Birds is a new Dragon Age quest which released this week. I like to imagine its name as “The Carry On Birds”, as in Peggy Mitchell and all that lot. (I wonder how many American readers have the faintest clue what I’m talking about now.) But anyway: the mod picks up from the ending of Dragon Age, plopping players into a world which has changed following the Blight. It should last you a couple of hours, and you can grab it here.

UPDATES
Homeworld:@ is a funny name. It’s also a mod for Homeworld 2, which was born of a dissatisfaction with the mother game. So here’s what this team considers to be the true Homeworld sequel. It’s now at version 0.2.0.0, which sounds like it would be too small to have any content in it whatsoever. But actually there’s a whole new game mode, along with new ships, maps and special effects, that have been added with this outing.

AND THE REST
The ModDB Mod of the Year awards is in full swing. Have you voted yet? If you’re struggling to remember what’s happened on 2010’s mod scene, here are a couple of roundups covering the first half of the year. Presumably there’s more to follow.

Meanwhile, PC Gamer are at it with their mod roundups again, counting down the 18 (a curious choice of number, admittedly) best Dragon Age mods. Might be a good chance to grab some good ones, actually. I think I’ve confessed this before, but I played Dragon Age on the console toy, so I’m sadly mod-free.

Ta-ra ’til next time. But remember – lob me an email if you spot anything juicy. Click on my name atop this post to do so.

Oh, hey, that SINS mod looks like fun. I have to admit that after a solid year of battles in Fleet Operations (Armada 2 Mod extraordinaire) I could do with some fresh Star Trek future space battles. Nice one, Lewis.